News from Jules | 03.07.2022 | Seeing the Light Part 2
Slowly, this winter I noticed what was down there in the darkness underneath the dreams, the ideas, the feelings: Expectations.
Expectations of the way I want things to be. Especially about the way I want to feel. And about how I want others to feel.
Actually, not just the way I want things to be. The way I already decided things are. Already imagined. Already attached. As if already lived.
Like with family. And love.
The expectations have always been there. As long as I can remember. Even before I can remember. Is it possible I was born with them? Just like already having the seeds of the next generation inside me when I entered this world?
In 2016, I turned 34-years-old and I was already starting to snooze my biological clock. The calling was growing stronger, but heavy on my heart as I was just starting to understand myself and my needs in relation to others.
I was learning about trust. I signed up for a retreat facilitated by a good friend and chaplain even though I didn’t know know what a “circle of trust” was. But it sounded good. And going away for a weekend at Menucha Retreat & Conference Center in the Columbia River Gorge with 30 people I sort of knew or had never met seemed like a great start.
This question was nagging me:
I always envisioned being a mother. But I didn’t know how I was going to do it. Or if I even could after watching my own Mom struggle: How could I ensure all of my various needs—including sensitivities and solitude and creativity—and coexist with others’ needs? None the less meet everybody’s needs?
This was my “tragic gap.”
“By the tragic gap I mean the gap between the hard realities around us and what we know is possible—not because we wish it were so, but because we’ve seen it with our own eyes,” said Parker Palmer, founder of the Center for Courage & Renewal and the Circle of Trust Retreats.
This was the point of the retreat—to create circles of trust and bear witness to others seeking the truth.
“It is so beautiful how much you care about these hypothetical children of yours,” said one of the parents after my small group wholeheartedly listened to my concerns for a couple of hours.
Back then, I didn’t know what “hypothetical children” meant.
In my mind, I already was a mother. I just didn’t have kids yet.
My mind continued to hold that vision until recently when I learned about some uterine polyps and ovarian cysts that might interfere with getting pregnant. It was the first time it occurred to me that I might not be able to bear children.
This is where expectations trick us.
This vision—this imagined reality—feels guaranteed. A promise that will be fulfilled.
Because there is comfort in guarantees.
A means to control the uncertainty. A way to carry hope forward in the unknown. But there is also suffering that runs so much deeper than just desire. As the promise is not fulfilled, it creates actual loss. And ambiguous loss at that.
Not because we’ve seen it with our own eyes, but because we wish it were so.
This is the opportunity.
To let go of expectations. To release the vision. To lean into reality.
There is tension as we change, especially when we sit in the tragic gap, as eloquently explained by Emily P. Freeman about five minutes into Hold the Tension Longer, Episode 208 of The Next Right Thing podcast.
When we sit in the space in between reality and faith.
Where I have been this winter.
Where we have all been this winter.
Where we have all been for the last two years.
May you keep holding the hard realities this week.
Love,
Jules